Flood of lawsuits against AIMA: 500 lawsuits filed in one afternoon alone
Lawyers are flooding the Fiscal Administrative Court with lawsuits against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, which is unable to provide assistance to immigrants on time. There is a risk of collapse.
The Tax Administrative Court (TAF) has been registering a flood of lawsuits against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) . Between the afternoon of Wednesday (October 16) and the morning of Thursday (October 17) alone, 500 lawsuits were filed by lawyers hired by immigrants who feel harmed by the agency's slowness in responding to their claims. "Our biggest fear is that the courts will collapse due to the excess of lawsuits," says lawyer Alfredo Roque, from VE Consultoria Jurídica. He points out that, before the excessive number of lawsuits, the Court's judges took between six and 10 days to notify AIMA and require the applicants to schedule an appointment.
“Within 30 days, we were at the agency's service desk,” says Roque. Now, there are lawsuits filed more than a month ago that have not even reached the judges. “Thus, the deadlines for AIMA's responses after the court notification, which used to be 21 and 37 days, went from 45 to 60, and now they are reaching 90 days,” he adds. The lawyer highlights that there are eight main requests made by immigrants in the lawsuits, including: family reunification, issuing of expired citizen cards, exchanging documents issued through the mobility agreement of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), and scheduling for people who entered Portugal with visas but without an appointment at AIMA.
“There are many demands, and they come from all sides. Today, most lawsuits filed by lawyers in Portugal have to do with AIMA,” he says, based on regular conversations with colleagues. The actions against AIMA, adds Roque, began to gain momentum about six months ago. At the time, the majority of clients were Brazilian. “Now, half of the people we serve are from African countries. And it is sad to see how dire the situation is for many of them. There are citizens who are no longer able to remain in Portugal, after waiting so long for service from AIMA,” he emphasizes. “There are also cases of people who have been in Portugal for more than five years, who could apply for Portuguese nationality, but are unable to do so, because the agency needs to issue a document proving this period, which does not happen.”
constitutional law The representative of VE Consultoria Jurídica points out that, in all the lawsuits filed with the Tax Administrative Court, there are requests for injunctions from the judges, who have granted them. The lawsuits have as an argument the constitutional right to come and go, provided for in Articles 109 to 111 of the Portuguese Constitution. “There is no way to deny a constitutional right. What we see, given AIMA’s inability to serve the foreign citizens who depend on it, is a curtailment of rights”, he points out. Roque is so concerned about the excessive number of lawsuits against the agency that he fears a repeat in Portugal of what happened in Brazil in the second half of the 1980s, when the courts were flooded with lawsuits demanding compensation for losses caused by an economic plan, in this case the Bresser Plan.
“There were so many lawsuits against the government that the courts stopped judging them until the Supreme Federal Court (STF) ruled on the matter,” he recalls. “I don’t rule out the possibility of something along these lines happening in Portugal,” he emphasizes. The office of the Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, António Leitão Amaro, informed PÚBLICO Brasil that 10 of the 15 new AIMA service centers are already in operation and those in Porto and Braga should start operating soon. These centers are part of the task force to try to reduce the more than 400 thousand processes that are pending at the immigration agency. The promise is to return to normal services for immigrants by June 2025. When contacted, AIMA did not comment. Fábio Knauer, from Aliança Portuguesa, believes that the government could speed up the process of regularizing immigrants in the country if it made greater use of technology. “Banks issue cards and deliver them to customers’ homes in less than a week. Why can’t AIMA do the same?” he asks.
Lawyer Fábio Pimentel, from CPPB Law, adds that the government needs to quickly correct past mistakes to value the presence of immigrants in the country, who have made an important contribution to the economy. Brazilians alone paid more than 1 billion euros (https://www.publico.pt/2024/10/14/publico-brasil/noticia/brasileiros-recolhem-1-bilhao-eurosprevidencia-portugal-recorde-2107822) (around 1.033 billion euros and R$6 billion) to Social Security in 2023. Lawyer Catarina Zuccaro says she is resorting to “guerrilla advocacy” to face AIMA in court.